


you can break it, break it

by rvd



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5801176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvd/pseuds/rvd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damen gets (lightly!) poisoned. Laurent comes running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can break it, break it

**Author's Note:**

> this is technically post-canon, but there's no way it won't be jossed by kings rising. OH WELL.

Damen looks up as the door to his room opens, expecting to see the physician, but the man standing in the doorway is blond and almost thirty years younger.

“Laurent,” Damen says, pleasure at seeing Laurent warring with duty. “You are supposed to be in Vere.”

Laurent crosses the room very carefully, as if any misstep will cause Damen to fall back into the jaws of death.

“You were poisoned,” Laurent says. “If you forgot.”

Laurent finally bridges the space between them when Damen tries to sit up. Laurent pushes firmly in the center of Damen’s chest, avoiding his bandaged shoulder. “Don’t _sit up_.” Laurent takes the seat next to his bed that the physician usually occupies.

Damen yearns to close the space between them.

The moment stretches. Instead, Laurent takes his hand. His fingernails dig into the skin, his thumb seeking and finding Damen’s pulse point. “Tell me what happened.”

“They didn’t tell you? The physician said—”

“Torveld,” Laurent says, “sent me a missive that my husband was ambushed by archers, and _poisoned_ on a hunting trip, and I should come to Bazal immediately.”

Damen frowns. “I told him not to worry you.”

Laurent continues as if Damen said nothing. “His physician said that due to the poison, you weren’t waking up.”

Damen winces. He says softly, “It passed through my system quickly—”

“I’m aware your hulking barbarian body does not react to toxins the way the rest of ours do.”

Damen ignores the barb. “I sent a messenger as soon as I woke up, he must have missed you.”

“No. Your messenger intercepted my guard and I near the border. ‘Husband—I am well; the situation is under control—With love, Damen’ was not a comforting message. You understand how I felt when I arrived and was told that while you were recovering from poison, you’d been stabbed by another would-be assassin.”

Laurent is furious; an anger Damen has not had directed at him in a long while now.

“I am sorry,” Damen says.

“For getting poisoned?” He says it meanly. “Or stabbed?”

“For worrying you.”

Laurent is silent. His lips are thin, his eyes cold.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” says Damen.

“You did.”

“I know that you are still securing your own country, I did not want you to have to choose between us two.”

The surprise shows clearly on Laurent’s face. “It is not a choice,” he says. It is something Damen knew but was still tentative to test. Damen does not doubt Laurent’s love or his loyalty, but neither does he want to put Laurent in a difficult position. “My would-be Veretian assassins can wait on your attempted Patran assassins.”

“I don’t think they were Patran,” Damen says.

Laurent’s eyes go cold. “The poisoned arrows. It is a Veretian tactic.”

“And so.” Damen glances at the armoire, a large fixture of dark wood and brass handles.

Laurent follows his gaze. “Which drawer?”

“The top.”

Laurent reaches in and pulls out the object, wrapped in the shirt Damen had been wearing. “I was told the second assassin escaped with the dagger.”

“It’s Veretian. I wanted to speak with you first.”

“You believe someone is trying to weaken our alliance or perhaps as a threat against me, that they struck while you were in Patras because it would be too difficult in Akielos.” It is indeed what Damen believed.

“No,” Laurent shakes his head. “It is too obvious. No Veretian would send assassins after my husband, and everyone with half a brain knows that. Whoever it is is looking to frame Patras, likely Torgeir himself. It is heavy handed, they want the Veretian connection to be disproved, so it points back to the very country the assassination was in.”

Laurent continues, but with Laurent here, in the same room, in the same country, for the first time in weeks, their responsibilities and would-be assassins seem far away. Damen is content to listen to Laurent’s sharp tactical mind, feel the soft way their hands are folded together, and delight in the fact that he gets to have this for the rest of his life.


End file.
